Brand new to REI. How much to start saving?

[Christopher Macias]

Hello, 

I am brand new to Real Estate Investing and have newly discovered Bigger Pockets. I am reading and listening to as much as possible to learn what I can. I now have W2 income, and would eventually like to invest outside of California, where I live. I was wondering if I could get some help in determining how much should my target goal be for saving money for a down and fees on a rental property. This would be for portfolio building for MTR or LTR. Any help or connections I could make would be helpful. Thank you in advance for all your help.

[Bonnie Low]

Short answer: as much as you can. But in all seriousness, house hack if you can. Arbitrage might be for you. You can try investing out of state but this can be very tricky if you don't know what you're doing and/or don't have a great mentor or trusted partner. The numbers can be misleading. Don't fall for the $50k duplex in Cleveland (no offense to Cleveland) because someone advertises it as a "cash cow." That cash cow could be in a very rough neighborhood with sub-par tenants, high turnover and damages, high cap ex, and you may find you can't get a PM to manage it or a contractor to work on it. Take the time to get familiar with whatever area you plan to invest in. Spend some time there so you understand what you're looking at when you start to analyze deals. Meet people through REI meetups and start to build a trusted team. You can do all these things while you're saving money. It's really tough to buy anything with less than $50k to work with nowadays, but you may be able to house hack and you could certainly get into rental arbitrage for less than that. Good luck to you!